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Poster:
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cream-puff-war |
Date:
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Sep 29, 2006 9:53pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: I wish |
At this point, I guess I can say I wish I had seen the band from the beginning...
I didn't start going to live shows until April 1970, when I was 16 and first experienced an evening with the Grateful Dead. (Maybe 5 tie-die t-shirts spotted that night at the Miles Davis/Dead show).
Then again, a couple of my best buds who are a couple years older'n me who went to shows starting with The Beatles at the Cow Palace in '64, then by '66 regularly making the Family Dog and Fillmore bills... crossing paths with Garcia and friends out on the floor or back stage, their stories are different than one might expect...
that is, of what they still remember.
It's not all groovy, and these friends may have been snubbed or made to pay dues to whomever was there before they were. But my friends - long since old enough to put their own spin on it all, nevertheless admit to having respect for the GD and especially for Jerry's guitar playing.
It always comes down to the music, rather than personalities. Jerry definitely had a magnetism, a presence. He had an interesting mind and was a good rapper, with a great speaking voice and a quick wit, good sense of humor and easy laugh.
I wish Jerry had written a book, an autobiography, but yeah that wasn't his favorite subject... himself.
Maybe that aw shucks 'tweren't nothin' thing he did was genuine.
I prefer the wild youth of their pre-Europe days to the the wizened touch of gray era, but even from the very early Mother MaCree's tapes you hear Garcia talking between songs a mile a minute, so even then he was the glue that kept 'em sniffin' for more (!?), a key figure on the washboard scene.
I had done some limited trading with one archivist some 15 years ago, and that was when I first had 10 or so tapes of various 1966-1970 soundboards, providing some much needed new old material for me to ponder the mysteries of time and space with.
Then 2 or so years ago, after having become as familiar as Live Dead (the LP) as with the shows on those tapes...
like March 1, 1969 and surprisingly crisp 1966 shows, etc, I came across this LMA and even within my limited taste for the band found much to enjoy.
Sure I wish there was even more from the '60s - if only they had taped all the shows - but I'm still finding things here and now that blow my mind...
like that "whoah" that Jerry sings out at exactly 1:08 into St. Stephen at the Avalon Ballroom on October 12, 1968.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-10-12.sbd.eD.10909.sbeok.shnf
PS - don't mind me, rambling on as usual!
This post was modified by cream-puff-war on 2006-09-30 04:53:02
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Poster:
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Arbuthnot |
Date:
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Sep 29, 2006 9:06pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: I wish |
No, please, ramble on as you say. It's always a pleasure to get the personal perspective. It's funny, but even for someone like yourself who started seeing the Dead in '70, to read that you wished you had seen them from the beginning. Well, i read something like that and all i think is i wished i had seen them even as 'late' as '79 or '80, but as it is i didn't first see the Dead until '86 with the Hampton shows, though i caught JGB as early as '84. However, taken in perspective with your own experience, dude, you were 'there' so to speak. But i guess it just lays it all out in perspective. I mean, that indescribable nostalgia for lost moments and opportunities. It's the thrill of living on this ball of dirt, the whole soup of experience. We take what we can, we taste it, we digest it, we take it to the next experience. Thank you for the post and for sharing some of your thoughts, comments, and memories of Jerry and the band.
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